


Reasons Why Not to be a Good Samaritan

by spaceleviathan



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 04:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceleviathan/pseuds/spaceleviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's bleeding heart and a show of goodwill finds him stuck in Pitch's underground caverns with no way out and no Pitch in sight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reasons Why Not to be a Good Samaritan

**Author's Note:**

> Proto Pitch? What’s a Proto Pitch? Well this looks kinda boring- Actually, no, I take it back this is interesting, lemmi go read summore- NO. NO ABORT ABORT. PROTO PITCH SCARY. PROTO PITCH BAD.

Jack jerked forward almost as soon as the Nightmares fell upon Pitch, his heart stuttering as he watched the fear overcome the wide, golden eyes, clouding his senses and making him shriek. Perhaps Pitch might have even called for help if he had thought it would come to him. As it were, convinced that this was the end, the boogeyman clawed fruitlessly at the grounded and screamed.

Jack wasn’t about to stand for that. He didn’t know much about Pitch beyond these past few days, and what he _did_ know did not cast the Nightmare King in the most flattering of lights, but that didn’t mean he should be left alone when he was calling out. No one should.

So Jack, the Guardian of Fun who could not stand to see people in pain when they should be laughing, reached back as Pitch’s arm unconsciously stretched towards them. He followed the Nightmares as they dragged their once king into the forest, and he knew their heading: the bed. The bed under which lay the entrance to Pitch’s lair.

This in mind, Jack was able to beat them to it by riding on the quickest winds, half-falling rather than flying, just to ensure that he got there before Pitch and his fears dragged him down too deeply to retrieve.

The Nightmare King was fighting, but it was not hard enough. He wasn’t strong, he was falling apart, losing to the very creatures he had created. As he sank his fingers into the ground desperately, Jack clasped his palm around his wrist.

Pitch looked to him, confused and terrified. Of _him_. Of _Jack_. He thought Jack was there only to aggravate the situation and resisted when Jack started to pull.

“Pitch, I’m trying to help!” He cried, hardly comprehensible above the high-pitched whines of the Nightmares. Pitch didn’t believe him.

He swiped his other hand in Jack’s face, furious and panicky, unwilling to trust that Jack had good intentions at heart.

Jack latched on to it, hearing the startled noise of pain from the spirit as Jack’s cold skin wrapped around his wrist.

“Please!” Jack told him, _please let me help_ , but by this point Pitch was too far gone – his fears overtaken his mind, and with it the Nightmares grew only stronger.

Jack could hardly hear the commotion of the other Guardians as they tried to reach him, but North’s voice had just enough boom to echo over the screaming black sands. “Jack!”

“Help me!” Jack returned, but he realised then that it was impossible for his friends to fight past the thrashing sand horses. He and Pitch were swarmed by them, the hellish creatures creating a barrier, tugging and pushing and trampling, herding them both towards the dank, narrow hole in the earth. Pitch’s nails left deep gouges in the dirt, bloody scratches made by a desperate man.  A man too out of his mind to recognise what was danger and what was not. To him, everything was the enemy. To him, all hope was lost.

He did not help Jack fight back, and therefore Jack found himself at a loss of what to do. He tried the lightning made of frost, belief and love strengthening his attacks, but only a handful of Nightmares were affected. From the other side, Sandy was whipping and North was slashing and all the tooth-fairies were lashing out as hard as Bunny was with his violent attacks. Even the children were coming closer, their touch full of pure belief and determination. However, the Nightmares were fat on the fear of their once master, and every instant saw those immediately closest to Pitch and Jack grow stronger.

“Sandy!” Jack called out frantically when a grey claw of a hand suddenly grasped on to his sweatshirt. Pitch had been jerked downwards into the hole, the darkness swallowing half of him completely, and it was only then that he clung onto the one thing even slightly willing to help. His golden eyes met Jack’s, bright with terror and hopelessness, and Jack only had time for one more shout to his friends when the black creatures pressed close, dissolving around them, drowning them  in sand. Jack was wiser than to try to scream.

He felt their bodies spiral downwards, endlessly it seemed, but the terror the Nightmares evoked pushed so close against his skin had him on the verge of mindless panic, unrestrained fear. He was trembling, but it was barely noticeable above their tumultuous travels.

What was conspicuous, however, was Pitch’s clutching hand and how it was slowly starting to slip.

Jack tried to grip it, regain the connection between the two of them – he had come here to save Pitch, after all, and he’d make a pretty poor rescuer if he lost him now – but the hand was falling away by the force of the sand, and Jack could not see where he was aiming. Quicker than a heartbeat, Pitch was gone, lost from him, and Jack had no idea where to start looking in the darkness.

Not that he had much of a chance. Almost as soon as the Nightmare sand had split them apart, Jack was suddenly deposited onto a hard, stone floor. He thunked his head hard against the ground, the sands careless in their disposal of him, and it made adjusting to his new surroundings that bit harder. He tried to look around, eyes darting to where he could hear the Nightmares sift away, but he couldn’t see them. He blinked, he rubbed at his eyes, he cast his hands around him, but it was gloomy here. He was consumed by the heavy blanket of darkness. He could hardly see his hand in front of his face.

The air was warm – too much so for Jack’s taste. It reminded him strongly of coming to visit Pitch’s subterranean catacombs for the first time. That was, in all likelihood, where he was now. However, without even the meagre sliver of light Pitch used to intimidate, to create shadows rather than pure darkness, Jack knew he was somewhere entirely different to the last time; another part of the labyrinth Pitch called _lair, sweet lair_ , which Jack hadn’t visited in his brief soiree only a few hours prior. It was no less confusing than before, of course, but Jack felt he was ready to handle it.

He checked himself over briefly, making sure everything was in order and that the Nightmares hadn’t harmed him too much – or, as he noticed belatedly, at all – and this caused him to pause, realising that even his staff wasn’t so much as nicked. This was a mixed blessing – on the one hand, great, he was in one piece and ready to see some action. On the other hand... well, Nightmares had to eat. Usually, that would qualify as anything in sight, and Jack certainly had felt enough fear to make a few good meals whilst he had been dragged alongside Pitch down that hole.

But then some little bright spark snagged in his mind, connecting previously unnoticed connections.

It was Pitch. Somehow the Nightmare King was so scared that his creations had been intoxicated by the smell of it, the taste of it. In the end, it was all that they wanted. Jack’s fear was nothing – a sip of mud-stained water put up against rustic wine. Now they all had much finer tastes than Jack’s brief spat of panic.

Jack spent the next three hours flitting to and fro, looking through the tunnels and the darkness and round every twist and turn, keeping an eye out for Pitch. It was what he came down for, wasn’t it? What he’d put himself at risk for? Pitch’s life was in danger and whilst he deserved many things, this was not part of the deal. Jack hadn’t signed on with the Guardians to become an executioner on his first outing. If that’s what the Man in the Moon had in mind when they were gathered together, Jack had a few select words for the silent watcher.

He felt the frustration getting to him. Each corridor led to another set of rooms, endless lefts and rights, confusing and monotonous and Jack was the Guardian of _fun_. Hello? Fun? Remember that stuff? _This_ was not fun. So he had been forced to start to think, even as he called out for the Boogeyman, pointing fingers for things which no one could be blamed for. MiM needed someone to help the Guardians, and that had been Jack. He couldn’t have predicted that Jack would end up lost in the underground lair of the Nightmare King – where it was much too hot and much too large. Jesus, how did Pitch even make this place? Did he find it, or did he carve it? Did the Nightmares help, or were they a new addition?

These were queries which kept Jack from sinking into mindless boredom at least, whilst he jumped from room to room, running his hands along darkened walls in the hope that maybe this shadow would be the right one. Every flicker of light and shift of shade had Jack whirling around, calling out for his defeated enemy into the darkness, but every time there was nothing. Just another lifeless patch of darkness.

Time was ticking by, and Jack was growing impatient.

It was really stupidly warm down here.

\--

He decided, when the forth hour came and passed – as far as he could estimate, anyway, what with little natural light to judge anything by, and no useful clocks hanging off the dripping, cavernous walls – that enough was enough. He’d done his good deed, he’d tried his best, and so help him he was _suffering_ down here. Even if he did find Pitch right then and there, some rescuer he’d prove to be: showing up late, sweating and weak with heat exhaustion, hardly able to carry his own weight, never mind whatever the Nightmares left behind of their ex-king.

Or worse, what if Pitch regained himself somehow? Snatched up the reigns again in between the time of his defeat and now? Pitch was the master of fear, the king of the shadows – Jack wouldn’t judge such a quick recovery time beyond his abilities. And if it was Pitch in all his glory awaiting a tired, shaking Jack, then the winter spirit was done for.

No, better he get out now. He’d played good Samaritan and it was a shame it hadn’t paid off, but Pitch was a big boy and could look after himself. Jack needed to do the same.

However, like trying to find Pitch in this endless cave, an exit was equally as elusive. Jack found his temper rising, took to smashing at the rock walls with thin tendrils of ice – all he was capable of mustering up in these sweltering conditions – before kicking at ceilings, yelling out into the echoing rooms, glare at the darkening skies. He must have spent the entire day doing this, fruitlessly looking for a way out. He found nothing.

However, his clambering up and down Pitch’s domain had given him the time to spot small segments of the caves, tiny corners where there was an unidentifiable breeze or touch of cold. Jack didn’t find them as comfortable as he’d have liked, but it was somewhere to return to – a home base, cooler than the rest of the lair and from them it was much easier to track which way he had already gone.

The main problem, Jack had recognised quickly, was that even without Pitch’s influence the shadows were _almost_ alive. They were certainly temperamental about which part of the caves they’d lead Jack to next. He had gone through the same shadow seven times and found himself in seven new places. It wasn’t unlikely that the entire joint was fritzing out because Pitch no longer had complete control.

So, from this, a few days after continuously playing this game, Jack ended up concluding that his only way out was to follow the original plan: Find Pitch, make sure he’s okay, and irritate him until he forcibly kicks Jack out of his gloomy den of doom. Jack wasn’t going to miss it once he was finally out.

However, with the original plan came the original problems: Jack had no idea where he was going, or where Pitch was hiding. If Pitch didn’t want to be found it would be easy for him to slink into the shadows, blend into the walls. Jack could have walked past him one hundred times over and never even noticed.

The frost spirit sighed, tapping his staff along the ground as he walked in one direction or another – he was reasonably certain he hadn’t been down this way before.

This was going to take a while.

\--

Jack had lost track of the time.

He had no idea how long he’d been stuck down here, but he think he’d sat down in one nook or another to rest perhaps seven times. However, that wasn’t an accurate temporal measure. Jack was a flighty creature by nature, prone to forgetting to rest in favour of playing or exploring. And he had certainly found a lot of places to explore.

He had expected Pitch’s lair to be more like its master – dark and gloomy and shadowy. He had been right on that account. What he hadn’t expected, however, was all the interesting things Pitch had hidden away down here. It seemed Jack’s absent host was something of a hoarder.

Most of the things Jack was discovering in his travels were dusty, forgotten, strange and eclectic. Perhaps things that had been shoved under beds, left in waiting until the boogeyman found them, took an interest and brought them home for further inspection. There were books, for young and old alike, clothes and shoes, toys and even pieces of jigsaw puzzles – just taken, no doubt, to annoy the original owner later when they try to complete it. Pitch would find little things like that funny.

Jack was thankful for this now, enjoying occasionally stumbling over things that were out of place here in this dank and bare prison.

All the prettiest things Jack had started collecting like a magpie making its nest. He occasionally found things glinting in the caves that he didn’t have the heart to put back down once scooped up, to be left alone for a thousand years or more, ignored by Pitch, lost in the endless shadows.

His favourite item was a little jewel which sparkled when it caught the meagre patches of sun, but the most interesting was a little golden locket. Inside was a picture – warn and ancient – of a young girl, no older than Jamie. Jack wondered who she was, fairly sure he had seen her before. But that was probably his mind playing tricks on him. Any face was a familiar and comforting one in his isolation.

Not that he wasn’t used to the solitude and nor did he even particularly mind it, but it was disheartening compared to the rush of the Guardians acknowledging him, Jamie and his friends seeing him, and even Pitch wanting Jack on his side. Jack had never been so popular, and he’d hardly had the chance to relish it until he had been sucked up with Pitch into the darkness, left alone once again. His own personal hell. If Pitch _were_ around, watching in the darkness, he’d probably be laughing himself sick.

Jack knew that his new friends were trying to find him, but if Jack couldn’t find an exit then he seriously doubted they would find an entrance. He’d have to get himself out.

\--

He wandered through the cave for days on end, interest waning enough to stop for longer periods. He had attempted to draw on the walls (and usually failed), break things (which was easier), and try to cool the air around him (with limited success). He missed the outside world more with tick of a second, daydreamed about it when a corridor was too long, and wondered often if it were by design that Pitch dragged him down here in the first place.

The fact was that Pitch was clever, if seemingly a little desperate, so Jack wouldn’t put it past him to stage a grand, terrifying backup plan if his world-domination bid went belly-up. Which it had done.

Perhaps he hadn’t been banking on the Guardians to help him after he tried and almost succeeded in killing them, but he had Jack’s number almost as soon as they met. By the time Jack first visited his underground lair in the search of his memories, Pitch knew him better than even the Guardians did; better than anyone had known him in the last three-hundred years. And wasn’t that Jack’s bit of luck – of all the people to pay attention, it was Pitch Black who ended up knowing him inside and out.

Therefore, with all that knowledge lingering inside his quick, slimy brain, it wasn’t beyond reason to consider that perhaps Pitch knew Jack wouldn’t let him loose if he staged a serious enough situation. Perhaps, if he acted pathetic enough, he could drag a Guardian down with him.

And if that _had_ been the plan, Jack considered, then the Nightmare King deserved a pat on the back, because it had been damn well convincing and it had _worked_.

However, that didn’t explain why Pitch hadn’t come to find him yet.

On the other hand, it was always possible that the man was just waiting for him to go mad from the loneliness. Whereas before Jack, even when he couldn’t be seen, had been capable of indirect interaction with others, now there was nothing. Nothing and no one. Jack was feeling a little stir-crazy from it already, and it couldn’t have been more than a few weeks stuck in this rank, gloomy prison, if even that.

It probably wasn’t unlike Pitch to be so cruel. Jack had spent a lot of time on this train of thought, circling around and reaching different conclusions, hating Pitch and being worried for him in equal measure. Today he was in a hating mood, unhappy and over-heated and feeling sick with the warmth. He was going to blame Pitch because he rarely felt miserable enough to hate himself for doing the right thing. And helping Pitch had been the right thing, morally, if not rationally. Bleeding heart, was Jack Frost. It was why he had been singled out for Guardianship, no doubt, but that didn’t stop him from cursing his caring nature. He used to be colder. The Guardians had ripped that to shreds quickly enough.

\--

When he did find Pitch, it came as a surprise. Jack turned a corner and suddenly, for the first time in too long, found himself in the right place.

He knew he was a lot deeper into the caverns than he had usually dared to venture – it was too hot and Jack felt too smothered to call more than a splattering of ice to himself, so if Pitch was in a bad mood then the winter spirit was officially screwed.

That said, as soon as Jack saw the Nightmare King, he realised he was probably going to be alright.

Pitch was still surrounded by a few Nightmares, but they were thin and scatty. It took little more than a sudden cry from Jack to startle them, to have them running. They were stragglers of the herd, the strong, scary ones that Jack would have been afraid of long since gone to find better grazing. Once the clattering of their hooves had thinned, Jack was left with nothing but the shadowed cave and the shallow breathing of a tormented creature.

It made the Guardian queasy to see him, actually. Pitch deserved a bit of his own medicine, but this was a little too far.

Jack knelt down, reaching his hand forward towards what he could best describe as a puddle – a splatter of darkness against the wall, with a head laying in the middle of it, eyes closed and expression blank.

“Pitch?” Jack asked, and as soon as the word pierced the silence, those terrifying golden eyes shot open and Jack scampered back. Pitch shot up into the air, an outline of a form towering high over the frost spirit, taller than Jack could remember, and Jack pointed his staff in line with that grey face.

As soon as he had appeared, Pitch was gone, moving across the walls, in the shadows, with speed and subtlety. If Jack had though Pitch was a master of the shadows before, it was nothing compared to how he was now – his body almost entirely compromised of darkness, with only a thin visage, almost like a mask, to identify it as the Nightmare King at all. Jack tried to follow his direction, keeping his position defensive, but failed.

Pitch was behind him once again, and the Guardian whirled to face him, letting loose a noise that was both surprise and rage.

“Stop it!” He said, his heart racing and his fingers shaking. Somehow, a splutter of frost escaped his weapon, but it disappeared as soon as it reached Pitch’s black body.

The creature, however, seemed taken aback by the attack and slunk to the wall, more shadow than person, almost intangible as he pressed himself into the rock. It took him a moment, his bright eyes staring, calculating, but eventually he calmed. Smiled. It wasn’t comforting.

“Hello, Jack.”

It took the winter spirit a moment to relax from his fighting stance, too on edge from those golden eyes gazing unblinkingly down upon him, and even as his heart rate returned to normal, his voice was understandably cautious. “Hi.”

Pitch didn’t reply, but nor did he move. Nor did he blink. He had been creepy in the first place, but now he was really vamping up himself up from disquieting to eerie. He watched Jack, and Jack felt himself raise his staff again.

Pitch wasn’t in the habit of flinching when presented with the staff – even upon their first personal meeting on the rooftop, the man had only reacted as an afterthought. Jack didn’t scare him. Even now, after his piteous defeat at the hands of this very weapon, he still felt no fear, didn’t lean back from the shepherd’s crook brandished in his pale face. It was strange. Like looking at a slate completely wiped clean. Pitch hadn’t been like this before.

“What happened to you?” Jack asked, to which Pitch merely inclined his head slowly. He seemed confused.

“ _Me_? What happened to you?”

Pitch’s voice was a marvel, Jack considered. A representation of his true self within his strange, twisting body. It was usually soft when speaking in close quarters, melodic and strangely soothing with just enough of a bite to jerk you back into dread, like a child hearing a bump in the dark just as they were slipping into sleep. But when he was angry it prickled, became louder, harder to ignore. It drowned out everything else, as fear and panic were wont to do when they became overwhelming. It became all a person could think of and they could either run from it, freeze to listen to it, or attack it to keep it away. Jack usually went for the latter.

But that was then. Now, like the rest of him, the nuances of Pitch’s tone had shifted. Just slightly. Just enough. Where before it had been soft, now it was doubly so; just a wisp on stone, like the shadows creeping in as the sun goes down. He even seemed _concerned_ as he asked his question, prompting Jack to believe that, whatever _had_ happened to him, it had only pushed him further towards that tentative ledge of sanity. Not that Pitch could ever have been called _sane_.

“I’m fine.” He returned, because, largely speaking he was. It was too hot down here at times, but he’d found crags and corners which were cooler and could withstand his influence – he’d carved out places of his own. He may not have found the exit, but that was what he was here for. Hopefully now, Pitch would point him in the right direction.

Of all the horrible things which he had feared happening to him down here in Pitch’s domain, none of them had come to pass. Pitch hadn’t even lashed out at him as Jack feared he would. Pitch, as before, only stared. So, yeah, Jack was okay.

“Fine?” He eventually echoed, and Jack nodded. “You’re fine? That’s good.” And after all the time he’d spent frozen in place, his abrupt exit was all the more startling for it. His voice came back, close to Jack’s ear and warm. Jack jerked away from it, swinging himself around and leaping up into the air. “That didn’t answer my question.” He had asked. He wasn’t behind Jack, nor looming anywhere around him, yet his voice lingered.

“Don’t,” He warned Pitch sharply, and heard a noise of inquisition from nowhere. He explained, “Don’t disappear. Let me see you.”

After only a brief pause, Pitch replied, “No.”

Jack called after him, “Why?” his tone furious and irrationally frightened, but this time no one answered. The shadows shifted from the cove and Jack realised he was alone again.

“Damn it.” He said, before attempting to find a way back to his nest.

\--

He encountered Pitch a few days later, calling out for him once he realised he was being watched. He didn’t initially recognise how he could have missed it as soon as he noticed something wasn’t quite right – it felt strange, like the twisting of a knife in his stomach. Soon enough, he remembered that he had felt like this all time before the Guardians and Jamie, before he was believed in. It felt not like being looked at, but being looked through.

Pitch showed up after some goading, but his expression was as disinterested as before. He was nothing like the being Jack had defeated up on the surface, and it made his skin crawl.

The Nightmare King came out of nowhere, dissolving from out of the darkened walls, size and physical being seemingly irrelevant to him as he circled around stone pillars and surrounded Jack in a wall of shadows. The youngest Guardian stood his ground, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t terrified. He had figured out, after some alone time between first seeing Pitch and now, that he wasn’t afraid of Pitch so much as Pitch was inspiring fear within him. He’d dug his claws into Jack’s mind, and was seeding spots of fright, which, with a little encouragement, grew all encompassing. However, knowing this didn’t help. Jack could only try to keep himself from darting away from Pitch as he drew in closer and keep his breathing steady.

At least he had come forward this time. Perhaps now he’d stick around long enough for Jack to talk to him.

His skin, or what was left of his face, looked darker this time, less well defined. He was fuzzier about the edges, and Jack hardly wanted to ask what that meant. It seemed obvious – Pitch was reverting, much like Bunny had done when his belief was too weak. After the shock of losing Easter, the rabbit had degenerated into something simpler, easier. Much the same, once his plan had come crashing around his ears, Pitch had ended up going backwards. With no belief to sustain him and no power to hold his form, he was no more threatening than the shadows themselves.

Curiously, with this in mind, Jack reached out into the darkness, only to find his fingers meeting air. Pitch, now larger than life, his eyes glinting brightly against the darkened backdrop, only had his ability to spark fear as a line of defence. Otherwise, should someone get too close, they would realise, as Jack had just done, that he was literally nothing more than hot air. It should have been scary for Pitch too, but as his head twisted at a grotesque angle down to Jack’s level, the shadows making his body do things it should not have been able to do, Jack saw only the same inquisitiveness that the Guardian himself held.

“What a strange thing,” he said, as if his bodily state – or lack thereof – was news to him. But then he realised, “Oh, of course. The Nightmares-“

“They were eating you,” Jack cut across, remembering the madness in the molten lava eyes as the sand horses smelt fear and gorged themselves on it. “They would have killed you.” But now he was nothing, and the deranged Nightmares could no longer touch him.

“No fear, no feast.” Pitch answered, before circling him like prey. He followed the blurry outlines of a face, still ever-wary of the Nightmare King. Somehow, despite Jack knowing otherwise, Pitch had never seemed so frightening. With it, the spirit realised how skilfully Pitch could manipulate a mind if desperation drove him to it.

“I’m afraid of you,” Jack deigned to inform him, the words slipping from his mouth before he could stop it. Pitch’s influence again. For the first time, the other spirit seemed to smile sincerely, but it was not an expression which lasted. Before Jack could blink, Pitch had melted back into the shadows and Jack could neither see nor feel him anywhere.

“Could you stand still for five minutes?” He called out fruitlessly into the endless catacombs. “I just want to get out.”

Next time they met, Jack was sorely tempted to punch him.

\--

It was the heat which finally wore him down. His temper was short, his emotions haywire, and the spike of fear which suddenly pervaded through his form made him lash out at the surrounding shadows, instantly recognising Pitch when he felt him.

“Just let me out!” He screamed, throwing whatever power he could summon towards the dark walls. He didn’t notice the presence behind him until it threw shadow over his body and he felt his mind scream with forced fright.

Real panic struck when he saw the gold eyes in his periphery, and he tried to dart away when he felt heat and shadow wash over him. He closed his eyes and covered his head with his arms, biting down the scream he felt clawing up his throat, but it was a minute before he realised nothing had happened to him. He peeked open an eye, only to see he was whole and intact. Of course he would be – Pitch could do nothing to him now. At the rapid rate he was fading, he would never be tangible again.

And he _was_ fading fast. What was once the Nightmare King was almost completely shadow now, with hardly a discernible feature about him. He was fear, of course, the emotions he inspired were stronger than ever, but that was all. He was hardly even a face, with no mouth to speak from and no jaw to define him. He was eyes, he was darkness, and he didn’t appear to know Jack at all.

“Pitch-“ Jack tried to say, but he was gone again in an instant, running once his attack had failed to deter his enemy, hiding in the abundant crevices and crannies which detailed his endless lair. Jack had no hope in finding him, and Pitch, it seemed, didn’t appear willing to listen.

Well that was it, then. The plan was done. Jack had failed, repeatedly, but it wasn’t his fault. He just wanted to leave, to get back to his friends, to the snow, to the children and the games. He would never look back, would never approach Pitch’s lair again, if only he could find an exit.

It was clear Pitch was not going to show him the way, so once again it was up to him.

As for Pitch himself – well, he was alive, even if he was soon to be nothing more than raw emotion and a crossing of unexplained shadow across a bedroom wall at night. Jack could do no more about that than he could have helped Bunny from his miniature form. Only belief could help Pitch now, only himself, and he was in no state to go looking for it.

And Jack, he firmly told himself, was not responsible for anything else but his own life. So, he was going to be smart and look out for himself.

If that meant leaving Pitch to rot in his own prison, then that was what it meant. At this point, there was truly nothing more Jack could do.

\--

A little fear is good for the soul – Jack’s more than others. Fear could be fun, provided that it was channelled correctly. A prank, a scary story, a rollercoaster, chasing a thrill; all involved fear and fun in equal measure. That said, the longer Jack spent down here in Pitch’s domain the more he felt his centre become suffocated by Pitch’s. Here, with sanity or without, Pitch had control and Jack was starting to feel the weight of it.

He hadn’t seen Pitch in days, and before then it was no more than occasional glances of him out of the corner of his eye. Jack was starting to entertain the notion that Pitch had finally fizzled out into nothingness, since he usually kept a close eye on the intruder. As it were, Jack had not so much as felt any kind of observation on him for hours that may or may not add up to more than a week all together. That concerned him.

What concerned him more was that he still hadn’t found his way out. The shadows were sending him to strange new places every time he stepped through one, and he couldn’t find his way back to his cove of glittery trinkets. Sometimes this seemed like a good sign, since the more uncovered ground he explored the more likely he was to find an exit, but other times it was merely upsetting. He’d found himself curled up in the middle of a patch of light – the source of which could not be discovered, may he add – more times in one week than he’d ever done in all his three-hundred years.

For now he was boredly going along with whatever route the teleporting shadows were taking him, allowing himself to twist through the darkness and emerge somewhere which looked both exactly the same as everywhere else in these subterranean caves, as well as completely different. By this point, he was too far beyond caring to feel either awe or fear at his unknown surroundings. He was still in Pitch’s lair and that was enough to consume him in incorrigible apathy.

He searched the walls and ceilings uniformly, a habit which he’d slipped into sometime in the past few weeks, keeping himself half-alert for any anomalies in the stone which may suggest an exit. It was a task which required more muscle memory than brainwork, so when his curious fingers _did_ find something unusual, it didn’t click for a long moment.

However, once it did, he felt himself flood through with elation, his heart soaring with excitement and joy, and he searched the narrow crack in the ceiling, half-blind in the darkness, only to discover it was just about large enough to slip himself through. Inside was only further blackness and no light as far as he could tell, it was entirely possible that it was simply a natural flaw in the wall and he would end up absolutely nowhere, but it was better than any lead he’d had before. With nothing to lose, Jack was willing to take that chance.

But as soon as he reached up to start his ascent, a sudden crippling anxiety wove its way through his veins, settling into panic in his mind. He started to think about the consequences of failing again, after he had experienced such hope. What if it _was_ a dead-end? How would he react? Would it only cripple his resolve further? Would he start to fade as Pitch was doing if he stayed down here long enough? Would he be driven insane by the heat and the hopelessness?

Jack shook his head suddenly, realising these emotions were a far cry from his usual jubilant self. He was self-aware enough to note that he had not been himself lately, but this amount of fear was alien to him. He could not spend time worrying about the theoretical if he wanted to get anywhere with a centre of _fun_ , after all.

Jack glanced around, not seeing anything but knowing Pitch was somewhere close. This was not Jack’s fear, but Pitch’s mere presence feeding on Jack’s mind.

Instead of a direct attack as he had done before, pushing fear on Jack and making him lose himself within it, the Nightmare King seemed to be simply watching this time, and Jack suddenly understood why the shadows had not allowed him back to where he had decided to settle. He had been _herded_. Pitch wanted him _out._

He pushed himself past the unwanted fear, heading up through the crack and feeling, with every inch through the narrow passage, that he was going the right way. The further he got away, the less he felt the terror, though there was a consistent niggling which suggested Pitch was following him at a distance.

Eventually, after a difficult climb that lasted an age, Jack emerged somewhere new. It was colder here, at least, though it was still miserably dark.

His eyes didn’t have to adjust, since it had been miserably dark for him for too long, so it took only a few seconds for him to realise he wasn’t merely in another cave. He let out an exuberant _whoop_ when he saw the dark outlines of trees, when he felt the grass beneath his feet, when he realised from the smell of the wintery air that he was probably in Canada. He laughed ridiculously towards the black sky – _night_ , the darkness was only _night_ – before taking a lungful of fresh, frigid air and darting up high into the air.

He looked back after a twist and a turn, calling out to the winds and weightlessly dancing with them. He recalled Pitch, the formless shadow with his helpless tendrils of fear reaching out unconsciously to a food source.

Jack looked down, and thought he could see two dots of gold amid all the black surroundings, but couldn’t be sure.

“Thanks,” he called back, but never knew if he was heard or not.

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn’t Proto Pitch, but I can’t say I don’t love him and that he didn’t heavily inspire this. Because he did.


End file.
